Award-Winning and Prize-Winning Author of Access Denied, The Wretched, The Roots of Evil, The Ghost of Clothes, Omonolidee, First Words and Unzipped: The Mind of a Madman, The Deeper Roots of Evil, along with numerous short stories, poems and articles.

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You may recall I previously wrote about how god-awful Amazon’s search is. I wrote here about how it doesn’t find “David E. Gates” and here about how it associated works by another author on my audiobook page to me.

If you want an indication of how crap Amazon search is, try this: Pink, the female rock/pop artist, has a new song out today called “What About Us”. However, you wouldn’t know that from a search on Amazon:

Not one result for the artist’s new single! I have written to Amazon, several times, about this because it is beyond absurd. They’ve done nothing in the months since I highlighted the issue to them. They say they can’t change it but it’s clear they can because they changed it earlier this year and made it worse than it once was.

Now, it seems, Audible have a similar, but strikingly WORSE issue. If you look up my audiobook, Access Denied, it shows “More from the same Author” beneath my book, detailing a number of works relating to religion by an author called “David Gates”:

Now, ordinarily I’d welcome any additional cross-referencing and exposure I could get. But, in this case – because I’m an atheist – I don’t want to be associated with any religious works.

I contacted ACX, the people “behind” Audible and they gave me the following response:

“The “More from the Same” section on the Audible website is an Audible feature for which we have little information or insight. From what we’ve been told, the results in the “More from the Same” section are related to a smart search function and relates products based on keywords and other factors. If someone has the same name as you, you will most likely find their works listed as well. Similarly, this other individual will have your product showing on their book page which will give you additional exposure as their listeners will discover your content as well.Since this is a smart search type of function it is an automatic process that cannot be manually manipulated. Unfortunately neither ACX nor Audible have the ability to manually add or remove products to the ‘More from the Same’ section. We have expressed concerns to Audible regarding this search functionality and hope to see this addressed and improved.”

I wasn’t happy with this. It’s not exactly a “smart” search if it reveals the wrong items is it? I requested the issue to be escalated. After some to-and-fro where I was given a number in the USA to call (which would have been prohibitively expensive) because the presumption was I was in the states, they directed me to Audible who, in turn, re-directed me BACK to ACX. I finally got an answer which indicated they hadn’t even bothered to read my original complaint! They said:

“To be honest, I didn’t see the initial issue that you presented to us until you requested that someone assist you. I looked back and found that you are trying to find somebody to fix what shows in the “More From the Same Author” section of your title profile. There isn’t anybody that you can speak to to have this section corrected. I reached out to Audible’s metadata team to see if this could be corrected. Unfortunately, Audible’s metadata team let me know that they don’t have control over the “More From The Same” section. It’s a website issue that they hope to fix down the line. Currently the “More From The Same” section is controlled by a general search. The algorithm will try to determine the best matching titles based on that search. It’s possible that the algorithm will choose to display only one entry, whereas sometimes the search will yield two or three entries. It will also choose names that are similar. This is all at random.”

I wrote back to them stating that their suggestion that I wrote those books was libelous and potentially damaging to my reputation. The response was unreal:

“My name is Jemal, ACX Support Supervisor. I appreciate your patience as I researched your escalated concerns related to the ‘More from the same’ feature on our site. I reached out to the appropriate department internally and I was informed that the ‘More from the same’ search feature is a code that cannot currently be manipulated to change the options associated with your name, unless your name changes (i.e. David E.G., D.E. Gates). You also have an option to go by a pseudonym if you feel that your reputation is at risk.”

So, because they won’t fix their search, the best suggestion they come up with is that I should change my name? Utterly ridiculous! Would they suggest Stephen King change his name? Of course not. They’d fix it pretty quickly I’d imagine! My response bore my frustration:

“That is an absolutely ridiculous suggestion. As is the suggestion that you cannot manipulate the code so it reflects the actual author of the book rather than a random search. I work in IT and know that any code can be manipulated or changed. I would suggest you escalate this further to your developers.

My name is my brand and I shouldn’t have to change it because your crappy system cannot work out the difference between the actual author and one found through a search of similar words.

Maybe you can change the words “more from this author” to “more from authors with similar names?”

Either way it’s farcical. Imagine if you wrote a book and created an audiobook from it and then somebody with a similar name created an audiobook about something you found extremely distasteful and that was suggested as one of your titles? How would you feel given the days and hours you invested in creating the book and the audiobook only to find that it was cross-referenced with something entirely inappropriate?

No other company has such a woeful return of results as is demonstrated by Amazon’s search algorithm. As I said previously Apple and Smashwords get it right every single time. So should you.”

I’ve been informed that this has been re-escalated, but I don’t hold out much hope. It’s a shame because previously ACX/Audible have been fantastic in their customer support.

I’ll keep you posted though I doubt anything will be done – it hasn’t with the Amazon search issue despite me writing to the Managing Director.

Amazon recently changed their search engine parameters and the results are pretty dreadful.

Whilst not perfect, before a couple of months ago, when entering “David E. Gates” as a search string, it would invariably return most of my publications on the first page.

At best, I now only see my author page as the second result and my latest publication ninth on the list. However, the results now are very inconsistent and frequently return NONE of my books on their first page. Other results include anyone with “David” in their name or “Gate” in the title which overrides what one would expect from entering the full string of “David E. Gates”. One result which is always featured is:

Hamish and the GravityBurp (Hamish 3) by Danny Wallace and Jamie Littler

How on EARTH does the search return this in relation to “David E. Gates”?

For a long time, Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney always appeared at the top of my search results. Again, nothing in that title or author’s name that can possibly be linked to “David E. Gates”. It still appears, though on subsequent pages. Baffling!

I contacted Amazon who simply fobbed me off every few weeks saying their “technical team” were looking into it. Confounded by potentially lost sales, with those not being able to see my publications when they search for my name, I wrote directly to Amazon’s head office with my complaint.

After a couple of weeks, they responded thus:

“We are not able to modify the search results for titles on our site. The order of the items that appear when searching for “david e. gates” is determined automatically by our system from information such as past sales history, current availability and length of time the items have been listed on our site.”

I would suggest they change the criteria that returns results, as some publications have been on the site significantly less than mine and mine are all currently available in a variety of formats. I have no data regarding the number of sales but question why the sales history is important as a search result? Surely by increasing the relevance of results, you can anticipate more sales? Hiding results merely stops any potential buyer of my works from seeing, and in consequence buying, them!

It was a frustrating response from Amazon to which I wrote back the following:

“That is ABSOLUTE NONSENSE! What a joke! If J K Rowling or Stephen King’s search results brought up none of their books, I’m sure you’d sort that out!!!

Plus, it USED to work! YOU CHANGED SOMETHING recently and it suddenly – literally ONE DAY TO THE NEXT – STOPPED working!

Really not happy about this and if not sorted will remove ALL references to Amazon from my publicity and links. What’s the point of my directing people to your pages if a search on my exact name doesn’t even produce ANY results????

VERY disappointed and would ask that you refer/escalate this appropriately.”

I also told them to compare Apple’s search results I get on Apple’s iTunes store – a search for my name there reveals ALL of my books!

I received another response from them:

“While researching this issue I took a moment to search for your book by typing in your author name and found all your book listed in our search results here:

A search query on Amazon.co.uk functions much like an internet search engine, producing results for each of the words separately and in relation to one another.

The order of items that appear when searching for your title is determined automatically by our system from information such as past sales history, current availability, and the length of time it has been listed on our site. These factors change and the search results are continually being updated to reflect those changes.

I am sorry that I don’t have better news for you.”

Put my name into an Internet search engine and the results related to me FILL the first page. This occurs on www.bing.com AND www.google.com so it’s no comparison!

It’s like putting in “cat” and getting results about dogs!

They clearly don’t get what it SHOULD return. Apple get it right. Put my name into the iTunes bookstore and ALL my books are shown on the first page!!

Not spread over twenty-nine pages!! How likely is a potential buyer going to scan through two or three pages, let alone more than twenty?

Not only that, but their latest response was from a no-reply mailbox. We all know how annoying THAT is when you reply and get a message back saying “Undelivered!”

So, without any resolution from them after MONTHS of trying to get them to understand and sort it out, I’m removing all references to Amazon from my advertising/promotional materials. I’ll direct people to Smashwords to download the Kindle versions and Apple for the iBook versions. I’m working on the provision of a direct print-on-demand service I can utilise for the paperback versions so I don’t need to rely on Amazon for that either.

I don’t see why I should promote a company that does little to help people at least find my books! It’s hard enough trying to get them to sell without someone’s ridiculous search results hindering the process as well!